Special Education Songs

What is Tuned in to Learning®?

Tuned in to Learning® helps special learners ‘tune in’ through the powerful medium of music.  We offer a wide range of special education songs and curriculum designed by an Autism Specialist and team of Board Certified Music Therapists. Our songs, books, videos and downloads help teach essential skills to students with autism, Down syndrome, Williams syndrome, brain injury, learning disabilities, speech disorders, orthopedic impairments, and other special needs. After serving students in special education for over a decade through our San Diego agency Coast Music Therapy, we found that parents and professionals did not have access to music that was designed specifically with the needs of special learners in mind.  We made it our mission to create special education songs tailored to the unique needs of students with autism and other learning challenges.  By integrating research-based techniques from the fields of special education, Neurologic Music Therapy and Applied Behavior Analysis, Tuned in to Learning® turns FUN into FUNctional educational outcomes.

How Can Special Education Songs Help?

Music gets our bodies moving, our voices singing, and our spirits lifted.  Whether a student is in preschool or high school, music can be incorporated in an age-appropriate way and adapted for all functioning levels.   Because so many individuals with special needs have talents and interests in music, we as educators and parents can capitalize on this strength to help our students grow and learn. Here are some of the ways music can help special learners:

• Music is an effective task motivator for many students, decreasing non-compliant behavior during initial instruction and providing a means for increased attention and duration of on-task participation. In fact, research tells us that individuals with specific diagnoses such as autism, Williams syndrome, and Rett syndrome may have elevated preference or heightened responses to music when compared to typically developing peers.
• Music functions as a mnemonic aid, assisting students in foundational learning and retention of academic facts, social & communication scripts, and task sequences.
• Similar to the use of visual supports, music cuing provides a means to structure auditory stimuli and speech output for students with cognitive or language delays.
• Music provides concurrent auditory and kinesthetic learning opportunities for students with multiple disabilities, severe orthopedic impairments, or students with visual impairments.
• Music is a successful inclusion tool, engaging special learners and typical peers together in anenvironment that is meaningful to all participants.

What’s Included in this Special Education Music Curriculum?

Tuned in to Learning® offers Downloads, Music CDs, Books with vibrant full color photographs, and CD-ROMs with printable content. Our downloads are available as individual MP3 songs or as a download bundle which includes a complete multi-media song lesson in MP3, PDF, and MP4 formats.

Program Features:

• Inventive songs targeting common IEP objectives in areas such as social skills, language, academic learning, speech & oral motor development, motor skills, behavior, and daily living tasks.
• Tools to help with generalization and comprehension including flashcards, worksheets, data sheets, icons for visual schedules, and photo pages.
• Adaptations and activity ideas for students who are pre-verbal or have physical challenges.
• Integration of evidence-based techniques from the fields of Applied Behavior Analysis and Neurologic Music Therapy including music mnemonics, photographic cues, textual cues, scripts, task analyses, and prompt-fading procedures.
• Alignments with the ABLLS-R, HELP, CAPA (for California), and Brigance are provided to guide you in song selection when targeting objectives from these assessment tools.

Music for Autism and Other Special Needs

Tuned in to Learning® supports a range of educational goal areas, and is versatile for use in both one to one teaching or group learning environments. Tuned in to Learning® is most commonly used with:

• Students in grades Pre-K through 1st grade of all functioning levels, including inclusion settings
• Students in 2nd through 5th grade with moderate to severe disabilities
• Because the majority of our songs utilize pop, folk, country, and hip-hop themes, many teachers, parents, and therapists have also found benefit in using Tuned in to Learning® songs with middle and high school students. In particular, Volumes 4, 5, 8, and 9 contain many songs appropriate for a variety of ages.

Our customers include school districts, private schools, autism centers, music therapists, teachers, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, ABA providers, and parents.